The Oakland Athletics still aren’t good

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It’s an ongoing sad story for Oakland’s home squad, the Oakland Athletics. They still are not good.

For the past two years the A’s have had a losing record, 69-93 in 2016, 68-94 in 2015, and this year has been no better as their record stands at 17-22 so far. That record is the worst in the Western conference of the American League, according to the Major League Baseball standings.

The A’s are tied with Kansas City for the worst record in the American League overall and hold the 7th worst record in the entire league, as they are tied for 23rd place overall.

It must suck to be an A’s fan. The team has an ongoing streak of bad luck.

Last weekend the team was swept by the Texas Rangers (19-20) in a 3-game series. “There’s 162 games this year,” said A’s pitcher Kendall Graven after Sunday’s loss. “There’s going to be times where stuff like this happens. I have full confidence we’ll bounce back.”

In the first game on Friday, the two teams were both slow in producing runs, and neither of them scored till the 5th inning. Right fielder Matt Joyce then homered on a fly ball to right center field in the top of the 5th to put the A’s up 1-0.

Shortly after, the Rangers’ left fielder Delino DeShields hit a sacrifice bunt in the bottom of the 5th, which sent Carlos Gomez to home plate to tie it up 1-1. An inning passed, the Oakland’s first baseman Mark Canha doubled on a line drive to the Rangers DeShields and then the A’s Trevor Plouffe scored.

Being only up one towards the end of the game in baseball is never ideal, especially if you are the Oakland A’s.

Oakland was up 2-1 going into the bottom of the ninth, but the Rangers brought nothing but heat in this last inning. Texas’ first baseman Mike Napoli got out on a sacrifice fly to left field, which led to a Texas run, to tie the game up 2-2.

Shortly after, third baseman Joel Gallo earned his team the win on a three-run, walk-off home run as he homered on a fly ball to right field to win the game 5-2; that good ol’ A’s bad luck.

In the second game of the series on Saturday, Oakland’s pitcher Sonny Gray threw a season-high 106 pitches and kept the A’s in the game. After he finished pitching through 6 innings, Oakland led by 2.

“As a team we believe we can win every game,” Rangers infielder Elvis Andrus said after the final game on Sunday and coming back in 4 straight games. “Regardless if we are down…we still believe we can pull it off.”

The moment he exited the game, the Rangers capitalized on his absence and scored 4 runs in the bottom of the seventh to seal a 6-5 win over Oakland.

Despite the A’s efficiency at the plate on Sunday, they still were unable to gain a win over Texas. Oakland hit a total of 3 home runs in the game by 3 different players, but it was not enough.

Oakland led 4-2 going into the bottom of the seventh inning and the Rangers added 3 runs to the scoreboard in that inning and 1 more in the bottom of the 8th, which gave them the 6-4 win and helped them sweep the A’s.

The A’s need to find a way to not only win, but maintain their leads and instill some type of consistency in pitching rotations, defensively, and appoint a reliable closer in order to maintain their leads, or this will be a long, long season.